Bill Clinton: U.S. policy on Syria trending in ‘right direction’

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that U.S. policy toward Syria is headed in the “right direction” after the White House’s announcement of stepped-up American involvement.

Clinton’s comments came after he was asked on MSNBC’S “Morning Joe” about POLITICO’s report on Thursday that the former president had said earlier this week that President Barack Obama should act more forcefully to support anti-Assad rebels.

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The former president also said he was “amazed” by the coverage of his earlier remarks, which he noted came on the “last or next to last” question at a closed-press event with Sen. John McCain, who has been a staunch advocate of arming Syrian rebels.

Clinton said on Friday that more U.S. assistance for the anti-government rebels is the right way to go.

“I think that we should support the rebel groups more vigorously, and the White House announced that they intend to do that,” he said. “They are exploring their options and right now they don’t want to talk about the details and I don’t blame them, because the less they talk about the details, the more likely their increased assistance is likely to be effective, and like I said, they want to see what our other allies are willing to do. So I think, on balance, this should be seen as a positive story.”

Some critics have suggested the administration is acting too late to tip the power away from the Assad regime.

Clinton also said that Obama’s trip to the G-8 summit next week would provide an opportunity to win backing from America’s allies on Syria.

“The president is going to be given the opportunity to talk to a lot of his counterparts at the G-8 meeting, but let’s see what happens, but I do understand why they don’t want to talk in a lot of detail about whatever they decide to do,” Clinton said.

Clinton also defended Obama for the way he released word of the U.S.’s increased involvement, saying the president was “entitled to finish his summit with the Chinese president, get his finding, be briefed” before publicly discussing more specifics about America’s role in Syria.

Critics of the administration slammed the decision to have the information about new U.S. military aid to the rebels and Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the conflict be released on Thursday by a deputy, rather than by Obama himself.

Also appearing on “Morning Joe” on Friday, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized the White House for a “sporadic, chaotic, unstructured and directed” approach.

“I think we need a serious policy review with the top people involved, not just an announcement by the deputy head of the NSA that an important event has taken place and we’ll be reacting to it,” said Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter. “The leadership has to be more directed from the top down, involving the president and his top, top foreign policy advisers. Not by some casual communiqués, worded in a vague fashion.”

Brzezinski said Washington was engaging more in propaganda than strategy.

“The fact of the matter is that we are threatened by sliding into a sectarian civil war in which both sides are very brutal. … I don’t see any real strategic guidance to what we’re doing. I see a lot of rhetoric, a lot of emotion, a lot of propaganda, in fact,” Brzezinski said.